Bouncing Question

Is there a way to bounce a number of tracks to a single track?  For example, when I select 5 tracks and select bounce to track, it bounces to 5 tracks. (I only had a single track to bounce to).... I just want to 5 to bounce to the one....
 
 

The real question is why do you want to do this?
 
It's easy enough to do, as scook points out. There at least a couple of other ways to get there, but I'm curious as to why this is needed?

I agree with gswitz ,
select the 5 tracks, range of time,sure stereo, no dither and "the whole mix"(FX and busses if you like),
64 bit engine if you need the best quality:
Sonar only is bouncing the 5 tracks to one stereo( or if you like mono) track.

Well, what if you want to mark a point in time to see if you are improving or messing up your track?
 
After Day 1 bounce to tracks your current version.
After Day 2 do it again.
After Day 3 do it again.
 
Now you can A/B all the different versions.
 
Honestly, I think there are lots of reasons to do it. Saving processing power is the oldest reason to do it. Once it's been rendered, you can listen without having to apply all of the FX you were using before... you could apply more FX or whatever. Sure, if you have a good PC this doesn't matter much.
 
How about this... when I bounce out a 4 hour recording, bouncing each tune using bounce to tracks, I end up with an additional track with short clips for each tune. I can visually see the tunes in the navigator and scroll around the project using the navigator. After bouncing the whole recording, I can go back and to it all again changing the EQ on the guitar. I can make a global change, re-bounce and burn then listen in my car when I'm commuting, saving me time.
 
I can come home and make more tweaks to the EQs - rebounce the mix to a 3rd mixed down track and call the artists over to listen and A/B the recordings so she can choose her favorite or we can talk about the differences and what other tweaks might improve the recordings.
 
Before it's over, I return to listening to each tune all the way through, adjusting settings for each tune, and then, yes, bounce to tracks again. Why not?
 
And when it's all over, if I don't want to keep all those rough drafts... Delete, delete, delete.
 
So what harm does it cause?
 
Using Sonar to mix and having an unlimited amount of time to tweak, prompts the question 'what do I want it to sound like?' I find myself saying, 'show me every way it could sound and I'll pick one' haha. And then, during the real performance, I apply some of the things I've learned using Sonar (try to anyway) and see how it sounds live - vocal compression - eq - mains compression - verbs (on what and how much).
 
Jonesey, I'm not trying to be a pain. I guess I'm answering for me, and you weren't asking me. Ha ha. The answer the OP gives could provide an opportunity for you to teach him something important. I guess I'm responding because your post made it sound like there was NO legit reason to Bounce To Tracks, and I took issue with that. You didn't say that in your post however. All you asked is WHY. I suppose there should always be a WHY for everything we do, and addressing the WHY might be more effective than addressing the HOW.

gswitz
Select the tracks and range of time you want to bounce.
Within Track View, Click the Tracks Menu and choose Bounce to Tracks.
 
You can bounce different things
-Tracks
-Buses
-Main Outs
-Entire Mix

This is not working for me.  Everything I try, I end up with a bounced track that shows the audio, but it is all silent.
 
I have 5 audio tracks coming out of SessionDrummer (kick, hihat, snare, crash, and ride).  I have done a little effects processing and I want to bounce all of that into one drum track, and then mute all the individual tracks.  But everything comes out blank.
 
I do have those drum tracks routed to a drums bus.  If I try to bounce only that bus, I get the message "No audio".  So I have been trying to do the procedure where you select a time range and then select all 5 of those drum audio tracks.  But I get nothing.  The bounce process does create a new audio track and there is a wave in it, but that wave is flat -- completely silent.
 
I think I could accomplish the same thing through File-Export.  But then I'd have to manually pull that back into the project and make sure I have the exported track aligned time-wise.  My understand is that is exactly what "bounce tracks" is supposed to do, without having to take it outside SONAR.
 
Any idea what I might be doing wrong?
 
===
 
On edit, this DOES work if I first freeze the SessionDrummer tracks.  I guess that makes sense, but it seems redundant.
 
 

Well that's weird, heh heh....I'm kind of tired, have just been on a fitness forum I frequent, came here, saw this post title and momentarily thought it was something to do with trampolines 

I think you should select all the drum MIDI- and audio tracks AND the bus, and select bus as the source.
But I still think there should be no need to use a bus in order to bounce five tracks to one. I doubt that feature had been changed so much in X-series. I've bounced countless times my whole project to one stereo track inside the project. Unfortunately my DAW isn't in working order to be able to brush up my memory, just moved to a new place.
Anyway, selecting both the MIDI- and audio tracks is necessary.

Bristol_Jonesey
 
Freezing the synth will create the necessary audio wavs for you, negating the need for a subsequent bounce unless of course you want a stereo submix of just the drums

+1


Freezing solves so many issues - can't recommend it enough. I usually freeze a synth with the effects baked in. The fewer synths and effects you have active, the less the cpu load and the everything goes way smoother.

Bristol_Jonesey
Freezing the synth will create the necessary audio wavs for you, negating the need for a subsequent bounce unless of course you want a stereo submix of just the drums

Yes, I did want to boil the drums down to one track for simplicity.  Bounce to track works if you have already frozen the tracks you want to bounce.  But it doesn't seem to work on unfrozen tracks.  Maybe that is working as designed, but it sort-of misses the point of bouncing in the first place.

Kalle Rantaaho
I think you should select all the drum MIDI- and audio tracks AND the bus, and select bus as the source.
But I still think there should be no need to use a bus in order to bounce five tracks to one. I doubt that feature had been changed so much in X-series. I've bounced countless times my whole project to one stereo track inside the project. Unfortunately my DAW isn't in working order to be able to brush up my memory, just moved to a new place.
Anyway, selecting both the MIDI- and audio tracks is necessary.

That did the trick.  I had been selecting only the audio output tracks and not the MIDI tracks.  Selecting both gives me exactly what I expected.  Thanks.